For years, Kurds in Syria have been banned from reading books in their own language. Offenders caught in possession of Kurdish literature were often imprisoned. Now, a non-profit initiative called Hunar is translating books into Kurdish to help save the Kurdish language.

As Abdo Shehu, who works on the project, explained to the Daily Mail, “We’re doing our best not only to translate literature but also philosophy and thought… so that Kurds can read world literature in their mother tongue.”

An NPR reporter recently tested out Google Translate and Baidu’s translation app during a trip to China. Her experience using the apps on a quest for a pedicure was mixed -some technical glitches and translation errors, but also a long conversation with a pedicurist who did not speak English.

This is an interesting read on the promise and pitfalls of these apps, which are great for personal travel but not quite reliable enough for business use.

A university student in Singapore is attempting to revive the Kristang language in Singapore. Kristang was spoken by the Portuguese Eurasians, descendants of Portuguese settlers who married into local families.

Kristang is a creole that combines parts of Portuguese, Malay, Mandarin and Hokkien. There are very few fluent speakers remaining and Ethnologue classifies it as moribund. Kevin Wong, a linguistics student who is half-Eurasian, has started an organization to bring it back to life with classes, events, and festivals.

Economist David Clingingsmith believes it is. He recently published data to that effect, demonstrating that languages with 35,000 speakers or more are “under no threat of extinction.”

He also believes we will lose around 1600 languages in the next 100 years. This is quite a bit more optimistic than the general consensus amongst linguists, which is that we stand to lose between 50-90% of the world’s 6-7000 languages.

Apparently, it’s not all bad having a President with a middle schooler’s vocabulary and a famously repetitive speaking style. Some English language learners say they find listening to his speeches to be helpful practice.

Whatever works, I guess. Although I can only hope they go somewhere else to learn actual grammar.

Lawmakers in Illinois shut down a bill that would have translated the state’s website into Spanish using actual humans because “Google Translate is available for free.” Head, meet desk. . . perhaps someone should send them a link to Rich’s article “Can’t I Just Use Google Translate?”

Got language skills? Netflix might pay you to subtitle the movies and shows it offers into a variety of different languages through its new Hermes program. It’s as close as you’ll get to becoming a “professional binge-watcher.”

To qualify, you must pass a test to demonstrate your ability to translate idioms from one language to another. Should be a piece of cake, right? Well, perhaps not, as these idioms from around the world demonstrate.